


the courage to be gentle

by aletterinthenameofsanity



Series: this could be good (love is patient, love is kind) [4]
Category: Power Rangers, Power Rangers Mystic Force
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Chip is Udonna and Leanbow's Child, F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, Family, Family Feels, Grid Theory, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Mother-Son Relationship, Motherhood, Multi, POV Second Person, POV Third Person Omniscient, Remix, So..., Udonna-centric as well, Unreliable Narrator, Yellow Rangers, and i wanted to write a love letter fic to a character i love, b/c we stan the best mom EVER, but the show did it first, chip is my son, he is one of the reasons i got into pr, i need to stop all of this light/fire symbolism, my fav yellow, this is b/c a lovely commenter called my last 2nd pov fic 'a love letter', you will pry him from my cold dead hands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-24 09:09:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17701478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aletterinthenameofsanity/pseuds/aletterinthenameofsanity
Summary: There’s a legend that’s been circling the Enchanted Realm for the past nineteen years, a legend about fire and birth and a Prince.Your mother has told the story so many times she’s forgotten how it began. She told this story to Clare, who told it to everyone else, who eventually told it to you.This is Bowen, they say. This is the fire that will burn the Master down.But see, this story was never about fire. The looks on these people's faces, the light in their eyes- this is hope. This is your power. Your smile shines like the sun and this is what people need. They need something to believe in.-The world set itself on fire when Bowen was born, you hear, and you don’t think of yourself. Why would you, after all? You have never been fire- you are too gentle, too kind, for that.You don’t burn and blaze. You never have. You spent your childhood hiding scars and never fighting back because if you’re completely honest with yourself, you aren’t built for confrontation. You forgive far too easily for that.-(Here's the truth, never realized: the world didn't set itself on fire when you were born; your mother set the world on fire in her search for you.)





	the courage to be gentle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tsukino_Akume](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tsukino_Akume/gifts).
  * Inspired by [don't you know that the kids are(n't) alright](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16544528) by [aletterinthenameofsanity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aletterinthenameofsanity/pseuds/aletterinthenameofsanity). 



> Title is from the quote "If you have been brutally broken but still have the courage to be gentle to other living beings, then you're a badass with the heart of an angel," by Keanu Reeves.
> 
> Remix of listed fic. I'm not sure if this can be understood without reading that other fic first, but the basics are that Chip is Bowen, and that after he ended up in the human world he was put with an abusive foster family. The Roccas found out and wrangled Soulmate laws so that he could live with them. Canon proceeds the exact same except for the fact that Vida, Xander, and Chip are Soulmates, with Chip giving Nick his blanket a few weeks before the final batter. After the final battle is revealed that Chip is Bowen, not Nick.
> 
> That should be good enough background for this fic!
> 
> Also, my thanks to Tsukino_Akume and their comment about my Dax fic being "like a love letter." It really stuck in my mind and it's what led me to writing this story, so thanks!

 

  _Most people carry that pain around inside them their whole lives, until they kill the pain by other means, or until it kills them._

_But you, my friends, you found another way: a way to use the pain. To burn it as fuel, for light and warmth._

_You have learned to break the world that has tried to break you._

_-_ **Lev Grossman**

 

The world set itself on fire the day you were born.

Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, a fairytale your mother planned to tell you if she had the chance. If she’s being honest, it wasn’t fire, but rather static electricity, a bit too much for a newborn, but it has a nice ring to it.

Too bad that you never have the chance to hear her story.

-

You always smiled too much for a child in so much pain. That's honestly one of the main reasons why it took years for the Roccas to realize that there was something wrong with the foster family you live with. You always smiled like the world was normal, like you had nothing to worry about.

You were a child, and people don't like to think about children being hurt and abused. You know all too well that is never an answer people like to consider.

It took a child wincing for far longer than should be expected, the glimpse of a bruise in a place that couldn't be easily excused, an aversion to return to your home, for people to start to catch on.

You would never forget the look on the Roccas' faces when they found out- the horror and anger in their expressions. When you explained, you didn't expect that kind of reaction.

Other than Vida, you had never had anyone who loved you- certainly not a family. You had Mr. and Mrs. Bishop and that was it. No siblings, no cousins, nobody who truly cared about you. When you first started to live with the Roccas, you weren't sure how to process the idea that you could have someone like Madison, a sister that would care for you without hurting you.

(Here's something you'll never know: the only people Madison has ever wanted to kill are the Bishops.)

-

Your mother would have loved you. Truly, she’s not lying when she tells you this, years later.

You’ll never know just how long your mother searched for you, just how desperate and deep her search went.

She was so young, you know. There were no wrinkles before the war. But afterwards, when you were gone- that's when they came. She spent too many days and nights looking for you, her precious baby boy. Her Soulmate was dead and you- you were the only family she had left. She loved you from the moment she knew you were coming, and she continued to love you after you were gone.

She spent every night for years praying, and every day searching. She probed her Soulmate bond during her dreams and saw fire, tried following the bare threads of your magical core that she was familiar with and only found a wall.

As the search dragged on, your mother knew she was going insane with desperate hope. As bad lead after bad lead presented themselves, she began to realize that the people of the Enchanted Realm needed a protector, a leader. She had to be the protector for them what she failed to be for you.

Your mother laid your name to rest by the creek next to the home you and her and your father were planning on living in. She sobbed and screamed and let everything out, and then she wiped the tears from her face and returned to the tree home she'd so lovingly built with her magic for the three of you.

Her Soulmate and her son, her beautiful boy, was dead. And she spent the next seventeen years grieving.

-

You grew up living with your Soulmate, kissing her and cuddling with her and loving her.

There was a spark in you, even as a kid, that everyone could see. At age seven, Vida indignantly told her mother that she didn't need a nightlight because your smile could light up the night.

This continued for years, past the time when the Roccas got you out of that house. You were the light of your Soulmate's life, one of the people she loved most in the world.

(Madison spent your childhood wondering how a boy with so many bruise could still smile like the sun hadn’t fallen.

Here’s your secret: you turned the bruises into blooms, carried the sun in your smile. You refused to let the pain take away your hope.)

Xander arrived in California and was folded into the group like he'd always been there. You had both of your Soulmates and Madison, who was practically your sister, by your side.

You knew that there was one person left, that Madison had yet to meet her Nick, but she loved you and Xander just like brothers and so things didn't seem too off.

In high school, Madison fell in love with history and maxed out the school's social studies classes, as well as most of the AP offerings. Vida listened to music and formed her own very short-lived band. Xander skateboarded and joined debate club. And you?

You joined the comic book club and no one dared call you a geek, for fear of facing the wrath of Vida Rocca. It only took one detention for the world to realize that Vida didn't care about punishment, as long as it meant protecting you and Xander.

You wore a cape to homecoming and prom and Vida and Xander smiled at you, and for once you weren't the one lighting up the world- it was them, Vida in her black-red plaid minidress and Xander in his green button-down and slacks.

-

In the meantime, your mother adopted a girl with a dead mother, swore to turn her into a sorceress as great as herself.

She stopped searching for you, but she never gave up trying to protect the world in your name. Her Soulmate sacrificed himself to build a better world for her and you- it was only right that she honored his memory.

Your mother searched for ways to fix things, a way to protect what was left of the Enchanted Realm from the Master if he ever rose again. She discovered legends of the Power Rangers, and she knew what she had to do, how she had to prepare.

-

You want to be a hero for all the times you didn’t have one, the times before Vida and Xander and Maddie, but in the end, you’re not. You are not the brave one who leads the charge. You are not the hero you looked up to as a kid.

Vida is your knight in shining armor. Xander is your Prince.

And you? You know, deep down, that you are just a kid pretending at being great. You’re just an orphan, carrying scars. You're no hero.

-

Your mother gathers five barely-adults, newly-christened wizards (these kids who are the same age as her dead son) to her side to fight. She helps them unlock their inner magic and link them to the Morphing Grid. She protects them all, treats them as her apprentices and her equals and her children all at once.

She looks at them and is at once reminded of hope and grief, of what her son could have been, if only he had lived.

-

Here’s the thing: everyone expects a Red, a hero, to be your mother and father’s child. It fits the fairytale a bit too well- your parents are heroes. It only makes sense that their son would be one as well.

Here’s the thing: there’s a legend that’s been circling the Enchanted Realm for the past nineteen years, a legend about fire and birth and a Prince.

Your mother has told the story so many times she’s forgotten how it began. She had a son, and the world set itself on fire when he was born.

She told this story to Clare, who told it to everyone else, who eventually told it to you.

This is Bowen, they say. This is the son of the greatest knight to ever live and the sorceress who protects us from the Master. This is the fire that will burn the Master down.

(No one ever stops to ask about the symbolism, about the fact that Bowen might not have had fire powers. They assume that Bowen, the son of the greatest sorceress and the knight who sacrificed himself to take down the monster, must have had explosive, firey powers. It makes sense that the son of heroes would himself wreak destruction on evil.)

But see, this story was never about fire. The looks on these people's faces, the light in their eyes- this is hope. This is your power. Your smile shines like the sun and this is what people need. They need something to believe in.

For years, the tale of Bowen gives them this. It doesn't matter that he's gone- he was there. He was a child, born of heroes. He was _hope_.

Now, it is the Rangers, their rainbow of magic and armor shining bright for all to see. They protect the Enchanted Realm from the Master, and suddenly people don't need the story of a missing child to give them hope.

-

Your blanket is an insignificant detail in your story. No legend tells about the way that your mother wrapped you in your father’s blanket, how she sang you to sleep, how she kissed your forehead before she had to run and fight off the Master's monsters.

The legends don’t describe the absolute fear that gripped her heart when she returned after the fight to find you gone.

Legends have a way of obscuring history. This history, your family's history, fades until it is only contained within the heart of an aging sorceress.

-

Your mother finds your father in the Underworld, finds her dead Soulmate alive under the guise of her enemy, and for a moment she wraps her arms around her Soulmate and all she can think is _our son is out there somewhere._

She doesn't just have her Soulmate back- her son is _alive_. Somewhere out there is you, her son, and all she wants is to find you.

There's some kind of desperate hope in that, your mother knows. Her son could be anywhere in the human world, could be any number of orphans. There are a million possibilities for where you could have ended up, and for all she knows you could even be dead by now.

There are no guarantees in situations like this, she knows.

But the hope that Phineas raised with his revelation about taking Bowen doesn't seem quite so insane when there's her Soulmate in her arms. If she can find Leanbow, then maybe she can find you.

Her family could finally, after so many years thought dead, be whole again.

-

The world set itself on fire when Bowen was born, you hear, and you don’t think of yourself. Why would you, after all? You have never been fire- you are too gentle, too kind, for that.

You are not the leader. You are not the protector. You are not the hero except in the small ways, the kind ways, the selfless ways.

You don’t charge into battle. You fight, but that’s not where your heart is. Your heart is there in the aftermath, the clean-up, the healing.

You hand Nick your blanket, the one you clutched to yourself for all these years, and when he asks why you just smile and say, "Because you need it."

You are a Yellow. Pinks are the heart of the team, Reds are the leader, Blue are the common sense, Greens and Blacks are the spirit, and Yellows are the kindness, the brightness. What Vida said about you as a kid is far too true- your smile lights up a room, but it does not burn.

You aren’t fire. Nick’s fire, blazing and burning and scorching. When your mother and father claim him as their son, you get it. He’s the perfect Prince, the perfect hero, the perfect son. He’s one of your best friends, one of the best men you've ever known, and he is as much of a hero as Vida has been for you.

You don’t burn and blaze. You never have. You spent your childhood hiding scars and never fighting back because if you’re completely honest with yourself, you aren’t built for confrontation. You forgive far too easily for that.

Nick is the fire, blazing and burning and scorching. You are the light, the soft crackle of electricity that illuminates the room.

It only makes sense that the world would set itself on fire when Nick was born, and it only makes sense that you would be nothing but a reflection of him. He is the fire, the hero, the long-lost son- you are just the orphan.

-

Your team saves the day and when the battle is over, your mother and father pull Nick into a hug. You see his smile, briefly, but you have much greater priorities. You look for Vida and Xander and find them exhausted and grime-covered but at your side.

"We did it!" Vida shouts, pulling the both of you into a hug, and you grin and kiss both of them.

In the distance, you see Nick and Madison hugging each other, and you see your parents' proud smile, and you are happy for them. The city you call home has been saved, and everyone has a family by their sides.

Your team are heroes, and this is all you've ever dreamed of.

(Well... almost.)

-

Your mother loves you, you know. That's the most important part of this story.

She loved you so much she adopted a sorceress and five children and she fought the whole damn world to honor your memory.

Legends are told by the people who don't live them. The world didn't set itself on fire when you were born; your mother set the world on fire in her search for you. It was your existence that gave her hope.

Sure, she gets your name wrong, but in the end- she knows you. She knows your smile, your eyes, your light.

She wrapped you in red, but that you came out Yellow doesn't matter. She sees you as yourself and she loves you, not because you are a hero, but because you are hers. She loves you, is proud of you, no matter what.

She sees you as yourself and she tells you she loves you, but nineteen years of grief can never be properly expressed.

But know this: if she could turn back time, she would erase your bruises and tuck you into bed and hug you everyday. She would hold you close and show you that you are loved.

She would give you the world she spent nearly two decades trying to protect.

-

And there's another story in here, something quiet and tragic.

Your father never got to hold you when you were a baby. You were born only two weeks before he sacrificed himself trying to take down the Master, and he was too busy fighting in the meantime. When he was turned into Koragg, when his body was forced under armor that burned his brain, he regretted never holding you.

Your father spent almost twenty years with his mind being rent apart. The only two thoughts he had, in few moments that his mind was his own, were of you and your mother. He prayed with a voice that he couldn't speak aloud that you two were safe.

You mother spent twenty years fighting and grieving for you- your father spent the same time thinking only of the love he had for you and your mother. He loved you before he knew you.

When he finally escapes and sees his wife, it's the first time in two decades that he is able to take a free breath.

He sees Nick and is told that Nick is his, and he accepts it. All he wants is to love you, to be proud of his son, and he is. By god, he is- his son is a hero. How can he be anything but proud that his son has taken up the crusade that he died on?

But then the world is saved and then he is told you are his son, and all he knows is that he saved his son from a curse last week and that you are not him. He barely recognizes you as the Yellow Ranger, who he has only ever said a handful of words to. He has not bonded with you, has not gotten to know you, recognizes you only as a background player in his war.

You are just a stranger to him. You don't look like him, not like Nick does. You aren't a leader, aren't a fighter- you took up a wand to help people, not to fight evil.

But he sees the way you look like your mother, the way you smile as bright as she did, the way your back goes straight when you speak to him, and he knows you. He does not know much about you, but he wants to get to know you.

All he wants in life is to have his son and his Soulmate back, to be able to love without being turned into a monster. And you are his son.

You don't see it, do you? You look at him and see a grizzled soldier, a hero who stares at you with haunted eyes. He looks at you and sees a young man who smiles too often and carries lightning in his hands.

He looks at you and sees his son.

-

You almost don't know how to process them as your parents, rather than just as "Udonna" and "Leanbow," the great sorcetess and the wolf knight. It's hard to think of them as your parents when you've spent so long without, when they're heroes and you're, well, you.

You don't know what it's like to lose a Soulmate or a child. You don't know what it's like to lose everything you have and spend almost twenty years fighting evil to prevent it happening to other people. You were part of a team that saved the world, but they've been fighting for twenty years, trying to scrape and survive and keep their sanity intact-

Except, no, you've been fighting too. No, it wasn't against the Master, wasn't actual battles, but you fought it. You carry your own battle scars from a war that never the left the inside of a house.

You were so strong, Chip. You were far stronger than you ever had to be. You were a child fighting a battle that never should have been yours.

You were a child whose light was nearly snuffed out. Your smile belies the scars on your stomach, the insults spat at you, the abuse that you suffered.

You were your parents' child in more ways than one. You didn't just have your mother's hair and nose, your father's eyes and jaw- you had a sense of justice that would carry you

You wanted to do right, even if you didn't always know how to.

-

You sit down for dinner with your parents, a month after they recognize you as yourself, and you see yourself in them. The similiarities aren’t just in your strengths. You see yourself in the slump of their shoulders, the age in their eyes, the pain in their stance. They don't know how to be parents and you don't know how to be a son, either.

But you're all trying and that's all that matters, right?

You chafe at them, sometimes, but mostly you just want to be loved. And they want to love you.

-

The name "Bowen" takes awhile to feel like yours. You sometimes feel like you aren't the hero that should have been the son of Udonna and Leanbow, but just some orphan who happened to stumble into Bowen's world.

But here’s the thing: your parents love you so very much. They don't need you to be a hero- they need you to be alive and healthy and happy. They need to know that you are a good man, that the war that broke your family didn't destroy it forever.

It takes months of repairing relationships, of healing, of hugs and awkward conversations, to start to bring you all closer to being an actual family again.

You bring Xander and Vida to meet your parents, and it’s a bit awkward. Your father just knows them as the Green and Pink Rangers and as your Soulmates. Your mother has obviously already met them before, but this is the first time they've met with her as your mother. And despite the fact that you’ve gotten closer to your parents, you know that Vida and Xander still hold something of a grudge for your childhood.

But everyone is trying. At the end of the day, everyone in this room want the same thing: your happiness. The other four people you care about most are all here, eating and bonding and laughing, and it may be awkward but it’s progress. It’s family. It’s everything you’ve ever dreamed of.

And things start to go a little better from there.

-

When your mother asks you what you to be, you tell her healer. You want to mend wounds, soothe bruises, help people that can’t help themselves.

Vida and Xander aren’t surprised when you start your apprenticeship- they know you too well.

One part of the story, never voiced, never realized, is the magic that sits in your veins. You are not an offensive wizard, carry no extraordinary skill for lightning magic, though that is what the Power pushes you to in order to fight a war.

It’s so easy to overlook magical strength when it isn’t suited to battle magic, to flashy displays and heroic actions. Maybe if somebody had been looking, they would have noticed the connection to your parents sooner. They would have realized that there is no way that a child born in the mortal realm could just develop that level of magic in a year.

But no one ever looked, and people only start to realize it when you begin your healing apprenticeship. Proper healing- not just surface repairs, but the purging of illnesses and the mending of mortal wounds- requires the deepest of magical cores, an anchor against death itself.

Now that it is over, though, now that you are pursuing healing- people start to realize just what was missing. You take to healing like a duck to water, and it becomes quickly apparent that your core is one of the strongest ever witnessed in the Enchanted Realm.  
  
-

This story is what happens after the legend ends, what happens to the heroes after the happy ending. They have families, learn to heal, learn to love. They find the parts of themselves that went missing during the war, learn to be human again.

The world set itself on fire for twenty years, but now it has calmed down some. You are providing hope for one of the worlds that you now call your own, twenty years after you were ripped from it. Everything comes full circle in the end, you know.

You are learning how to be a healer and a son at the same time, learning how to love two people who already love you. And it goes rather well, if you're honest.

One day you hug your father and mother and your thought of them isn't their names, but _Mom_ and _Dad._ And things aren't perfect, yes, but they're not on fire anymore either. 

- 

Once upon a time, the greatest legend giving hope to the Enchanted Realm was one about a baby, the son of heroes. Then it was a legend about the Power Rangers and the way they protected the world from the greatest evil.

Now it is about a healer and the sparks in his hands, the way he spends all his time mending breaks and stitching wounds. 

You, in every form, in every story, have always been about hope. You are light, you are smiles. You are bright.

You, Chip Thorn, Bowen ap Leanbow, are the son of heroes, the Soulmate of heroes. It's no surprise that you would become a hero yourself, if a hero of a less flashy sort.

 

_You are loved more than you know_

_I hereby pledge all of my days_

_To prove it so_

_Though your heart is far too young to realize_

_The unimaginable light you hold inside_

_The world is brighter than the sun now that you're here_

_- **Light, Sleeping At Last**_


End file.
